


Myriad

by Pimpala27



Category: Hurts
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Music
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-03-29 16:39:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19023820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pimpala27/pseuds/Pimpala27
Summary: Theo is lost without his best friend by his side. Everything that could go wrong has.





	1. 1

Adam had been a forgiving man, it happened to be one of his greatest faults, but also one of the traits i needed to see in him the most. My mistakes were grand and emotional in nature, adams kindness had been the perfect counteract. He was my perfect partner.

The flat was empty without him, still and quiet as his heart had been in the end. Tiptoeing through its lifeless rooms i felt like a ghost, invading a place that i had once considered home. 

“Theo, come out of there, foods ready.”

My mothers voice called me from a memory, and i felt something similar to gratitude pulling at me when i realized her humming had stopped. It had been months since anything akin to music had echoed through these rooms and it was still too soon. 

Her face didnt hide the concern as she watched me, and it was only then that i noticed the lines that were in the later stages of setting in. my mother had always been a free spirit, something i had inherited from her. It had kept her young. somehow we had both aged years. 

My attempt to eat and free her of more stress failed me, and it was clear that she understood. She waited until there were two steaming cups of tea in front of us before she tried to bring it up. 

“Theo, your father and i have been thinking about your situation, and we both agree that you shouldn't be living here on your own, at least not right now, so soon after well, everything.”

I wasn't surprised at the turn in conversation. This happened just about every time she came around. Wed avoid the proverbial elephant in the room right up until the last minute. She meant no harm, i was still sane enough to recognize this fact. She cared for me, and she had loved adam just as much as i had. The anger in me was not directed at her. 

“We've decided you should come back to live with us, take some time off work. Well take care of the rent for this place and you can just take a break, take a step away from your life here.” the words were hesitant, carefully chosen as if she had known i would immediately recoil from the suggestion.

I could hardly make sense of what she was saying. She had never broached this subject in such a way, never suggested such interference in my life. I suppose she didn't mean for any of it to be insulting, but that's how it seemed. To suggest taking me away from the only things I had left of adam. Had I not been so lost in grief id have been fuming. 

“Thank you mum.”

I didn't look up from my tea as she kissed me on the forehead and continued on explaining the plan that i had apparently been the last to find out about. 

I wasn't angry, i didn't have any room left for anger, but i couldn't seem to find a word for whatever was tumbling around inside me. It made about as much sense as anything else in my life did at that moment. 

I couldn't seem to move after she left, rooted in the exact position she had left me in, unwilling to allow time to continue in its disastrous path. 

The light around me faded with the setting sun, the watery grey a reflection of the turmoil in my mind. I sought comfort in the softness of the dark. I could forget everything that was missing if i couldn't see that the space was empty. 

 

Eventually i curled myself around the largest pillow i owned on the couch that had begun to take on the shape of my body and fell asleep with the light of the telly casting shadows that in my exhaustion could easily be mistaken for a person.


	2. 2

The disorientation came first, and later fear. There was darkness all around, a void that might consume me if I strayed too far, and patches of light in the distance that disappeared if I got too close. There was a name for the state I was in, but I couldn't find it. 

I was looking for something, someone maybe, I knew that instinctively but I couldn't remember why. Searching through the emptiness around me I wondered what I could possibly be missing that was so important. 

“You won't find theo here.”

The voice echoed all round me, seemingly coming from nowhere and yet everywhere all at once. There were no distinctive qualities to it, nothing that I could make sense of within it. 

I found something familiar in the word, repeating it to myself as I wandered through the lonely abyss. There was a slight comfort that found in it. The recognition of something, even if I couldn't quite find the point of familiarity. 

I called out later, searching for the voice that had interrupted the silence. Shouted into the boundless void that seemed to have swallowed me whole. 

The word was somehow beautiful to me, and sad, consumingly devastating. The grief tugged at me and there were flashes of a mans face, standing above me, an indescribable emotion playing out on his features. Something that terrified me, id have given anything to never witness a sight like that again. 

I must have known him somehow, this familiar stranger. I couldn't recall it but his face held a softness that beckoned me. A primitive part of me needed to seek him out, follow him to the edge of the universe just to have him with me. 

………………….

We ran, not unlike schoolchildren, through the street that would lead us home. There was something akin to joy lifting me higher than I had ever been. Laughter echoed off the pavement and when it reached my ears I was surprised to find that it was mine, 

He ran ahead of me, spinning with both arms out as if to try to catch the wind. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd sprouted wings and flown away. The idea of such a sight not unfamiliar to me. 

“Can you believe it adam?” his eyes were brighter than the sun, and I swear the smile he shone could have melted me on the spot. 

“Of course I can believe it, there's no way you wouldn't have got the role. You were amazing up there Theo.” 

My response made him pause for just a second, the excitement faltered as if he understood the meaning of my words more that I had meant for him to. 

“You were brilliant too, you didn't even have to practice, you belong on the stage adam, natural talent is what youve got.”

His statement was so determined, so sure of his words that he silenced anything else i might have to say. I could never argue with him like this, would never risk the endless hope that I relied on him to provide. 

We raced the rest of the way home, and i held back just a little, knowing he would never win otherwise. 

………………………………………..

I ran for what must have been several kilometers before I even considered the futility on the act. It was a strange experience, I never tired, never required rest, and still I couldnt seem to get anywhere. 

As far as I could tell there was nothing ahead of me and nothing behind me, yet there was a sense of urgency pushing me to continue, to move. Nothing above me and nothing below to catch me if I fell. I was completely alone.


	3. 3

I couldnt have known how frighteningly lonely my life would become, isolated from everything that I had surrounded myself with. my existance felt sort of empty, lacking in direction. 

The room that had been set up for me to stay in was void of anything I could connect to. the photos were dated and contained images of a person I hadnt been for a very long time. trophies for participating in football matches were lined up along shelves that I could only vaguely remember putting up. 

I wasnt the boy that had begged for the curtains to hide the tree that knocked against the window every night. there was no longer any hint of the child that this room was meant for. that boy had seen far too much to appreciate the innocence of the place. 

The house was quiet, in all the wrong ways, and far too large for me to find comfort in it. there was no space for me in it, not anymore. it wasnt the right place for me. not without my best friend at least. 

"Come on Theo, hurry up, youll make us all late. You know how mum hates that."

My elsest sisters voice was shrill, laced with anxieties as she rushed about the house. I had been ready for what seemed like hours, sitting on my bed fiddling with the multi coloured cube that had once been able to fascinate me for days on end. 

we were meant to be going to a dinner with our extended family, all the cousins and aunties and uncles sitting in a room together trading the latest gossip. 

My attendance was mandatory, after so much time avoiding the family dinners, living a life far from the one cultivated for me. 

too much time and yet no time at all passed before I was sitting at a table with a platter of sushi in front of me. 

Id recognized the music playing, faint and nearly drowned out among the noise in the restaruant, but I noticed it. it was a brilliant tune with catchy lyrics, a song I had once called genius. a band adam had introduced me to not too long after we met. 

wed been sitting on the couch, him sitting still lost somehwere in that head of his, me with my legs in the air lying upside down on the couch, high on the rush of blood going to my head. 

the room had been quiet, save for the ticking of the timepeice that had sat on the mantle since the day I had discovered it at a thrift shop and had refused to leave without buying it. 

I was on my third attempt at counting all the lines in my left hand when adam jumped up with no warning nearly knocking me to the ground. 

"I remember now!"

The enthusiasm in his voice was the only thing that kept me from smacking him upside the head. 

He rummaged through the pile of records that sat in the corner of the room, placed so artfully that no one but him ever dared touch it. 

When the music finally played I quieted my mind, focusing wholly on the sound. it was beautiful, the first note flowing into the next and it was a wonderul journey that it took me on. 

"this was the first song I ever heard."

I could picture it, the same man I had gotten to know, but shorter, awkward and unsteady on his feet, so very different from the person he had worked so hard to become. sitting unwillingly in a car, hearing good music for the first time, not knowing what it was, but falling in love with it all the same. 

It was the same song he had played for me that day, that filled the empty spaces in the restaraunt that night, and I resented the world for its cruelty. 

There was no one to reprimand me when I slipped outside cigarette and lighter in hand. 

I imagined him there with me, for just a second, shaking his head, reminding me never to make the same mistakes he did. 

A part of me hoped for a miracle, but id long since stopped giving in to anything related to hope.


End file.
